Crunchy Acoustics


Source

Gastrophysics

You may have noticed that fresh food has a characteristic sound. The onomatopoeia krrat or something like that. There's a reason for it.

The chemical bonds that keep a structure rigid, particularly if they contain cell walls, offer a resistance to the action of the mandible that when defeated creates ripples due to mini explosions that travel at more than 343m/s, this means they when broken, get you a mini-sonic booms.

The sound produced by CO2 bubbles breaking, after a freshly served beverage, is also a similar event. I'm talking about you Coca-Cola.

As our brain has learned to deal with this synesthetic cluster fuck we vary our sense of taste with it[1]

Psychoacoustics

Is not only the speed but also the frequency of it. A crisp sound is a property of something brittle as the layer that offers resistance is small, something we've learned to associate with fried, less fresh and salty food. [2]

Normally ranges below the 1.9kHz (A#6/Bb6 on a piano) are considered crunchy. Low-frequency sounds are associated with higher energy, this is known as the crunchy barrier. There's an interesting psychoacoustic relationship between this point and taste. [3]

Change in taste

People seem to hate plane and hospital food. Hospital food it kind of makes sense, as it needs to be restricted for consuming of sick patients and flavor is the last thing on doctors minds at that place yet even food that would otherwise be quite tasty is dull during a plane flight, probably due to the high background noise eliminating the high frequencies and their overtones.[4]

It has been shown that high-frequency harmonic sounds have an effect on the experienced taste by people. If you taste your coffee while listening to these sounds (high-frequency) it tastes sweeter. If you use low pitch brassy sounds it actually tastes bitter.[2]

The most common type of equalization or response in microphones used for the human voice uses a boost around this frequency and a limiter bellow 100Hz for ambient noise reduction. Probably cause we like the sweetness historically associated with it.


Source


Let me, let me *burp* go full conspiratory theorist with you. If you want something to have this sensation in a song you would probably use a key that breaks this barrier multiple times, so probably a Major Key, probably on A Major, and dulled dragged crispy slightly nasal voice with low harmonies and the lyrics to accompany...

Well, I introduce you to such a song.

It is indeed a bittersweet symphony. The perfect musical meal.

(yeah, I know is actually closer to E Mixolydian and I'm stretching it a bit. So what B I T E - M E, I'm crunchy with that)



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References

  1. Sensory Evaluation of Food: Principles and Practices. By Harry T. Lawless, Hildegarde Heymann pages 384-385

  2. The Perfect Meal: The Multisensory Science of Food and Dining by Charles Spence

  3. Zampini, Massimiliano, Spence, Charles. THE ROLE OF AUDITORY CUES IN MODULATING THE PERCEIVED CRISPNESS AND STALENESS OF POTATO CHIPS. Journal of Sensory Studies 19. 5 (2004) 347-363

  4. Spence, Charles, Charles Michel, and Barry Smith. "Airplane noise and the taste of umami." Flavour 3.1 (2014): 2

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